Bananas Again?

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Thadjosh76
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Bananas Again?

Post by Thadjosh76 » February 19th, 2021, 9:04 pm

Why are we getting Bananas again? Seems to make it less special. Does this mean other pets might be making a comeback? That I might be able to get behind.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Tobylicious » February 20th, 2021, 6:22 am

If it were any other pet id be happy. But we already have a battle pet that shares bananas exact model that anybody can get. I just hope this means the collectors edition pets can be obtained eventually somehow. I missed out on a couple. I also hope the sloth is actually possible. Them changing the way it works makes me think it won’t be easy to get the second pet..

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Rioriel » February 20th, 2021, 10:08 am

The Sloth pet looks absolutely amazing

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Khorah » February 20th, 2021, 11:26 am

Tobylicious wrote:
February 20th, 2021, 6:22 am
I just hope this means the collectors edition pets can be obtained eventually somehow. I missed out on a couple.
^^ this..
I missed the baby bear and the Vanilla CE.. I hope this means that Blizz is considering opening those up again..
I DO have Bananas and yes it cost me real money to get him off Ebay.. I aint gonna lie.. I really wish the sloth was the first pet, but hey, it doesnt hurt my feelings if more people have a little monkey running around with them..
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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Harpooha » February 20th, 2021, 12:21 pm

I'm really cynical about this.

I have no issue with Bananas being part of it. I bought it off the AH a long time ago. It ranks pretty low on the list of TCG pets for me.

But I am completely over large corporations doing these kinds of charity drives. If people want to give money to a charity, there are many ways to do it. This just gives Blizzard a chance to look good through our contributions. It's good PR for them. But we shouldn't need an incentive to contribute to something we care about.

What really gets me is that players get Bananas whether they contribute or not. This is a really odd incentive. It encourages a lot of free riders to just wait to see if they can get a free pet.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Gráinne » February 22nd, 2021, 8:11 am

I'm pretty cynical about this as well.

Of all the moves they could have made in this general direction, this one seems bad in every dimension.

I have no confidence in the effectiveness of the "some give, but all get" strategy.

It undermines Blizzard's credibility badly about retired items. Discontinued items have value because they are no longer available, and people buy them for that reason. This undercuts the reliance people will place on Blizzard's consistency. For a company who still haven't even fulfiled their promise to, for example, open the Ordos Sanctuary to people who joined since Mists, it is a very bad look.

Blizzard have spared themselves even the tiny effort of adding a new pet. Bananas does not fill an extra slot in pets, either by model or by abilities. Bananas IS exactly a Baby Ape, with a worse breed. Unlike, say, Broot or Blazehound, it doesn't bring a previously restricted battle ability. It doesn't bring a new skin. It brings nothing new to people who didn't already have him. This truly baffles me. If they really, for some confused reason, wanted to remove the value from a TCG pet instead of adding a new one, why not pick one that had some form of unique feature?

And especially: why did they offer a pet, and not a mount? Pets are a minority interest, whereas the majority drools for mounts. If their purpose was to raise as much interest, and hence money, as possible, they picked the wrong category.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Moneypenny » February 22nd, 2021, 3:46 pm

i dont agree with this at all its seem completely unfair, who dont they swap it around and get bananas last ot everyone chips to the qst chain
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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Rosqo » February 22nd, 2021, 5:01 pm

Banana's as a pet is very lucklustre already and only really in demand for a handful of niche collector's who probably already have it anyway.

What ever happened to that Labrador looking dog that got datamined a couple years ago? That would be a far better reward for the community donations.

The method of not having the pet for direct sale is a little off. I'd imagine that research has been done into the most profitable method of collecting money for their chosen charity by milking whales whilst also recieving donation from players with less disposable income.

Do they give a breakdown of how £1 donated is distributed to the charity like 70p goes to the charity and 30p to blizzard admin costs?

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Wezmerelda » February 27th, 2021, 4:38 am

Late to the party here but I wanted to respond with my opinion on the matter. It's rather long, but I've got nothing better to do so here goes.

First up, I acquired Bananas ages ago. I don't remember if I got it from a TCG card myself or if I bought or was gifted a code, but the fact remains that with the first tier of this charity reward, I get nothing new. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't the least bit disappointed by that, but I am TOTALLY FINE with the decision. Really. And I applaud Blizz for how they're implementing this, after having a chance to think about it for a bit.

Here's what I think Blizzard's thought-process on it is:

The charity is for Doctors Without Borders (aka Médecins Sans Frontières). DWB/MSF serves around the world but they started in regions in Africa (Nigeria) and South America (Nicaragua) providing medical care. It would make sense that Blizzard would opt to have pets that were "on-theme" for the charity. An ape and a sloth fit this bill quite nicely, as they can be found in those countries, respectively. I mean, that makes complete sense. It wouldn't be as on-theme to have brought back, say, the Molten Corgi, Lil' Nefarian, or Frosty. So there's definitely some rationale there.

"But why bring back a duplicate pet, anyways?"
We all know that Bananas was previously available via the extinct TCG and it's now relatively exclusive (not impossible to find, but comes at some real world money or in-game gold cost via the AH). Does that seem like a cop-out? Maybe, maybe not. There could be a few things at play here. I'll be as far from generous as possible here and say, well, let's say they just wanted to be cheap about it and not spend the time designing a 2nd new pet for this. Does that surprise you? We're in pandemic lockdown and everyone who works there is probably way overburdened with keeping to the schedule as-is what with working with possibly non-optimized equipment, certainly not-optimized communication, and a whole slew of new operational paradigms mixed with the side effects of being largely isolated at home without normal social interaction for almost a year now. Things are going to fall behind no matter how much of a superstar you are at work. And would most players feel great about having them spend their precious time on a 2nd pet design when they could be applying that to getting 9.1 out the door? As a pet collector I'd be all for it, but I realize most of the community are not pet collectors. So are we really that upset that only one of the pets is new? Gah, that opinion feels icky to me.

"But I already have Bananas, that makes it feel less special, or makes me feel worse about spending resources to acquire it before now!"
Sure, Bananas will now no-longer be tied exclusively to the now-defunct TCG. That's a great start! My opinion is that exclusivity related to time-limited rewards or events are bad for the pet collecting community. I'm fortunate that I started playing pretty early on. Not vanilla by any means, but early enough. I have pets that a newer player (as of now) can never, ever get. Can you imagine getting into pet collecting and finding out that there are something like 20 or more pets that you'll never have any hope to acquire? Wouldn't that burst your bubble and perhaps sour you on pet collecting as a whole? It definitely might for me. And as time passes, fewer and fewer newer players might just be not as interested in collecting pets, and thus Blizzard might start making fewer pets. Not great for pet collecting as a whol! Sure, I like exclusivity in pets. But I like the kind of exclusivity of pets such as Hearthy, or the Stunted Direhorn, or even the nigh-impossible Bucketshell/Sir Snips. This exclusivity is tied to player effort, not because they just-so-happened to be subbed at the time.

With the return of Bananas, and the recent availability of Lucky Quilen Cub on the Blizzard Shop (formerly only gotten through the now-unavailable Mists of Pandaria Collector's Edition), Blizzard is solidly stepping their toes into righting this unfair advantage of some collectors over others. I've definitely bought a collector's edition late, when it was no longer available at original MSRP, and paid a hefty sum, just to get the pet. Am I proud of that? No. But I'm a completionist and had some extra money, so I did the thing. Yeah the armchair economist in me would definitely feel a bit of regret if they put those pets up on the shop for like $10, but I'd also feel pretty awesome about potentially getting to purchase one of the, say, Vanilla CE pets for a similar price. That would make me very, very happy!

"But what of this new stretch goal reward model? Is it just Blizz trying to scrape as much money away from players as possible, with an extra carrot on the stick?"
I don't think so, at all. In the past, Blizz has been criticized for offering charity pets, as it "forces players to use real world money to buy an in-game item". For broke collectors this kinda sucks, sure. My opinion is if you can't afford $10 or whatever it is to donate to charity once a year in order to unlock an exclusive pet, then maybe pet collecting should be on your backburner of things you're worried about. They're changing it up this year and saying, okay, EVERYONE gets a pet, so no one gets left out. If the community comes together, you'll even get a 2nd pet. Everybody wins! And if you can't afford $10, no worries, they'll let you donate $1 to help hit the stretch goal if it suits you better. Flexibility! Isn't that what we want?!?

And for people assuming that Blizz is only using the charity to get free PR for doing something good on the backs of their community? I think that's really uninformed. I'm sure Blizzard does far more charitable giving than the annual World of Warcraft charity pet drive. Most larger businesses have whole departments dedicated to charitable giving as, in the US at least, it's an effective form of reducing your tax burden, at the very least. And it's just good to do. For public relations, for employee relations, and for the common good. The charity pet program allows Blizzard to let their WoW community become involved in a charitable campaign and I personally see nothing wrong with it. If you are against that for personal ethical reasons, that's your right, but I happen to believe that anything that gets people more aware of and involved in charitable giving is for the greater good.

How do I think that could possibly work? Well, personal story here: When I was a lot younger, I was a fan of Madonna. She was involved in AIDS-related charities and, turns out, she was going to be making an appearance at a local charity event. As a fan, I wanted to see her appearance and thus bought a ticket by donating to the charity. Through that event, I became more interested and involved in the charity, attending more events and giving more, and ultimately volunteering at the events and in phone banks for the foundation. And to top it off it brought me closer to a great community and more compassionate towards AIDS and HIV-infected people, and during this time (I'm old, btw) that was still a fairly intimidating concept. If one person learns about Doctors Without Borders through the WoW charity pet event and decides to dig deeper, or gains some perspective or compassion for others needing care, how on earth is that a bad thing?!?

Again, while at first I was a little deflated about the Bananas offering, after 2nd thought I am totally behind it. And also, I'm completely frickin' ecstatic about Daisy the Sloth because sloths are, like, my spirit animal, so of course I feel like this is gonna be a win.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Lyadia » March 19th, 2021, 8:13 pm

Will it be exactly the same as the TCG bananas is my question. Should I sell my bananas now while its still worth something, before I get a duplicate?

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Baronkarza » March 20th, 2021, 11:56 pm

I agree with Wezmerelda on just about everything here. Time- or quantity-limited items are generally a bad thing. Calculating the value of a thing to you by basing it on other people not having it seems more than a little selfish to me. I know a lot of people who want a PS5 and have been unable to get one because resellers are snapping them up and trying to make a buck off people by artificially limiting the supply. I was lucky enough to get one on an Amazon restock alert on Twitter, but I don't have any sort of strange inclination to lord it over all the people who weren't as lucky as I was.

Which brings me to my second point, that I believe Blizzard might be trying to kill the secondary market on TCG or CE pets by gradually re-releasing them so that people who weren't lucky enough to get them the first time around have a chance to get them if they really want them.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Rioriel » March 21st, 2021, 10:32 am

I have Bananas, but I've no time for those whining about the rarity of the pet being reduced. Tough titties. All you and I did previously was pull a card out of a TCG pack, or buy it. That's hardly special. I played the TCG competitively back in the day, and won a Spectral Tiger. Gave it to a mate who was absolutely over the world with it, becuse I'd had my moment of winning that particular event.

Absolutely no one gives two farts in the game about who's got what. Gone are the days of standing by the AH waving your huge massive definitely impressive Thunderfury about, or receiving /salute from other people at your Hand of A'dal title while you /afk on a Shattrath mailbox.

Contrary, I've no particular desire for them to suddenly make currently unobtainable pets... obtainable. I know I can't go get the Vanilla CE pets, nor the iCoke ones or whatever, and I'm OK WITH THAT. Neither do I want to spend hours upon hours in Alterac Valley or wherever grinding for PVP marks or honor because the content doesn't interest me. If I joined a new MMo tomorrow I know I wouldn't be able to get their anniversary pets or items, much like the Olympic pet in WoW... and that's fine.

Completion doesn't mean EVERY THING. It means getting to a point where I've realistically obtained what I can with the resources I've got and... enjoyed the journey to that point, where I'm satisfied with the entertainment and achivement so far.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Hawg » March 24th, 2021, 2:31 am

The problem with making the first goal tied to Bananas is that its looking very much like everyone will get Bananas (only $14K left to reach $500K at the time of writing this post), which means those who already have Bananas get essentially nothing.

I personally made a donation to the charity because I like it (have donated to them before). But given how donations have dramatically slowed down over the last few days, it seems highly unlikely that the donation target for Daisy will ever be met ($1MM).

So ultimately, for my donation, I get only the satisfaction of knowing I donated to a worthy cause (which is nice), while all the people who didn't donate at all get Bananas (assuming they don't already have him). On the one hand, I shouldn't have a problem with that because it is after all benefiting the charity. But on the other hand, I can't help but feeling the result is fundamentally unfair.

To make matters worse, this new mechanism for these charity pets does not seem to be as effective at getting funds to the recipient charity. I can't find details of what the final donation amounts were in 2019 for Whomper or 2019 for Dottie, but data for the other donation campaigns is available here and shows:
  • November 2009: Pandaren Monk - over $1.1 million (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    December 2010: Moonkin Hatchling - over $800 thousand (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    May 2011: Cenarion Hatchling- over $1.7 million (USD) for the American Red Cross's Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami relief efforts.
    October 2011: Server blade - over $330 thousand (USD) for the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
    November 2012: Cinder Kitten - over $2.3 million (USD) for the American Red Cross's Hurricane Sandy relief efforts.
    November 2013: Alterac Brandy - over $1 million (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    December 2014: Argi - over $1.9 million (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    December 2015: Brightpaw - over $1.7 million (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    December 2016: Mischief- over $2.5 million (USD) for the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
    September 2017: Shadow - over $1.8 million (USD) for the American Red Cross Disaster Relief.
So my end thought is that this test by Blizzard is a failure to the charities, to pet collectors that already have Bananas, and to many donors (who already have Bananas). It seems the only people who benefit from this are the freeloaders.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Index » March 25th, 2021, 5:47 am

I'm a bit disappointed, not in that it's Banana's but in that as I had one already (BMAH FTW) I don't appear to have received a second one, I was hoping to sell it / gift it down the line to someone newer to the game :/

Cruddy move Blizz, as always :(

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Harpooha » March 27th, 2021, 12:42 am

I don't keep many duplicates. And if I'm going to have a monkey out, Bananas is pretty much last on the list.

Is there any reason to claim him? I doubt they gave this one any distinguishing marks, but you never know.

BTW, the price for him on the AH ranges from amazing to disgusting. . Amazed that anyone would still charge 10K for him. Disgusted that anyone would charge over 100K for him.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Mehetabel » March 27th, 2021, 8:46 am

I'm desperately hoping that Blizzard DON'T do this with the rare collectors editions. Please keep them rare.
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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Gia » March 29th, 2021, 12:54 pm

Index wrote:
March 25th, 2021, 5:47 am
I'm a bit disappointed, not in that it's Banana's but in that as I had one already (BMAH FTW) I don't appear to have received a second one, I was hoping to sell it / gift it down the line to someone newer to the game :/

Cruddy move Blizz, as always :(
You have to claim it in the online shop, it's free.

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Index » March 30th, 2021, 3:40 am

Gia wrote:
March 29th, 2021, 12:54 pm
Index wrote:
March 25th, 2021, 5:47 am
I'm a bit disappointed, not in that it's Banana's but in that as I had one already (BMAH FTW) I don't appear to have received a second one, I was hoping to sell it / gift it down the line to someone newer to the game :/

Cruddy move Blizz, as always :(
You have to claim it in the online shop, it's free.
I know, I'm well aware of that, and when I tried to claim it said "You already own this item" ;)

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Gia » March 30th, 2021, 9:12 am

Index wrote:
March 30th, 2021, 3:40 am
Gia wrote:
March 29th, 2021, 12:54 pm
Index wrote:
March 25th, 2021, 5:47 am
I'm a bit disappointed, not in that it's Banana's but in that as I had one already (BMAH FTW) I don't appear to have received a second one, I was hoping to sell it / gift it down the line to someone newer to the game :/

Cruddy move Blizz, as always :(
You have to claim it in the online shop, it's free.
I know, I'm well aware of that, and when I tried to claim it said "You already own this item" ;)

Wow! That's terrible!

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Re: Bananas Again?

Post by Index » April 20th, 2021, 3:17 am

I just noticed but I now appear to have the second copy! Just randomly was there when I was searching for duplicate pets :)

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